Fulton Bag & Cotton Mill: The Engine of Cabbagetown

Lyrics

[Intro]
Eighteen eighty-one.
A red clay hill waiting.
By the Atlanta and West Point line.
Waiting for a pulse.

[Verse 1]
Jacob Elsas, you saw the raw nerve of the tracks.
You heard the whisper in the steam.
You brought the brick and the mortar.
And you rose from the Georgia mud, a fortress of industry.
Your shadow fell long across the valley.
A promise called north, to the mountains.
A new kind of harvest.

[Chorus]
Then the first breath, a hiss of steam.
The first shudder, a groan of iron.
And the roar began.
A thousand looms waking at once.
You are the engine.
You are the heart.
And Cabbagetown is the blood in your veins.

[Verse 2]
They came down from Appalachia.
With calloused hands and quiet hope.
Faces etched by sun and lean years.
They came to feed your iron hunger.
To stand in the snow of cotton fiber.
To learn the rhythm of your deafening song.
Their lives measured by your whistle.
Their dreams woven into your threads.

[Chorus]
And the first breath, a hiss of steam.
The first shudder, a groan of iron.
And the roar became a world.
A thousand looms waking at once.
You are the engine.
You are the heart.
And Cabbagetown is the blood in your veins.

[Bridge]
The air turned thick with machine oil and raw cotton.
The floorboards trembled, a constant, living hum.
You built your own world inside your brick skin.
Your own power, your own ice, your own time.
A closed loop of labor and life.
Every soul tethered to your turning gears.

[Outro]
You are awake.
Your smokestacks breathe for the first time.
Over the shotgun rows.
Over the low-lying ground.
Eighteen eighty-one.
The pulse begins.